Wednesday, October 15, 2014

I hope everyone's year is off to a great start. I can't believe we are halfway through October already!

My class is absolutely amazing this year, and I am having such a fantastic time accelerating them and meeting their needs. I can only hope that their scores on all of the lovely assessments reflect all of the learning going on!

Besides the actual "teaching" part of teaching, I'm struggling to keep up with the demands that keep piling up. I know you all can relate. Paperwork for this, keeping a log for that. A committee for this, growth goals for that. I'm very grateful that my classroom is running so smoothly. Otherwise, all of the extra stuff would probably push me over the edge.

We are wrapping up our study of place value, addition, subtraction, and estimation. These skills take up the entire first marking period so that we are certain that students have a solid foundation before moving on to other concepts. Side note: I am SO excited to get these kids rolling with multiplication and division. I'm anxious to see how far I can push them!

I've always found estimating sums and differences a pretty dry concept to teach.

What is a teacher to do?
Add dice, point values, and call it a game, of course!

My students had a great time playing this game, which I dubbed Estimating Extravaganza! It turned out to be a great way to practice this skill. I saw a few games similar to this when I was browsing, but I wanted to make it a little more involved. Each round has a different set of directions. The rounds include both two and three digit numbers, and it calls for estimating both sums and differences.

Click the picture or link to download. Please let me know what you think! =)